Basqueiness

At the end of August, I was lucky enough to experience the annual fiestas in a friend's hometown in the Basque Country. My own hometown has a few small festivals, my favorite being a weekend in the fall when the baseball diamonds are taken over by classic midway attractions and dubious-looking rides, but this was a totally different story. For starters, Basque fiestas last for a week. Many of the attractions are things you would expect-- concerts, a parade, fireworks, fair food--but they are accompanied by some very unusual offerings.

The most bizarre item on the agenda was my introduction to "traditional Basque sports," which is more or less synonymous with "lumberjack activities." The classic example is a competition to see who can pick up the heaviest rock (harrijasotzaile). I didn't see this, but I did see an equally odd event pertaining to the subheading of "quarry activities." Teams of three men (though I was pleased to note one team that included a woman) took turns driving a long steel rod into a block of stone. It's a relay event, so after two or three minutes the first person passes the pole to the second teammate, and so on. The object is to drive the most holes into your block of stone. A referee is stationed next to each block with a little metal gizmo he uses to measure the depth of each hole; in order to be counted (thus allowing the team to start bashing a new hole), the hole must be a certain depth. It's a pretty wild thing to see--the participants grunt in a manly way as they wield the steel rods, and the whole parking lot rings with the rhythmic clanging of metal on stone. Little puffs of dust rise up from the blocks where they are being struck; if you stand close enough, you might even get hit with a flying chip of rock. Quite a lot of people from the town had turned out to see the event. After twenty minutes or so (twenty minutes!), time was called, and the winning team was declared. The announcer went on to wish all the competitors luck in their upcoming league events. Yes! Not only does this sport exist, but it's apparently sufficiently popular for there to be a league!

Other highlights included the outdoor concerts (earliest starting time, 11pm; prime-time weekend starting time, 1am), unexpectedly marching in a parade (featuring the traditional Basque dancers and instrumentalists pictured above), and volunteering at a concession stand, where I struggled mightily to understand the clientele:

Man screaming over live Basque-language band: Give me a katxi of beer!
Me: A what?! (This turns out to be a Basque term for "very large beer.")
Tipsy woman: I'd like two kalimoxos! (The most-ordered beverage by far, kalimoxo is one part Coke, one part cheap red wine. Really.)
Particular man: I'd like a (word that sounds like vulture)!
Me: (to native Spanish- and Basque- speaking concession workers) Ummmm, there's a guy here who just ordered a vulture.
Native speakers: Ha! He didn't say vulture, he said (identical-sounding word). That's a mixed drink where you open a bottle of coke, pour out a little, and pour a shot of rum right into the bottle.
Me: Naturally! Right away!

In short, it was a very unique and enjoyable experience which almost made me wish I were Basque, as long as I wasn't expected to participate in traditional sports or drink more than a sip of kalimoxo.

Olive oil

Before moving to Madrid, I was under the misconception that Spanish food might be similar to Mexican, French or Italian food. Now that I've been enlightened, the closest comparison I can make is to stereotypical English food, except that instead instead of boiling or steaming the food in question, here it is fried in olive oil. Use of spices is extremely sparing; garlic, salt, paprika, and parsley are commonly used, plus saffron if you're making paella. And that's about it. Many restaurant tables have a little metal doodad which is clearly intended to hold a salt shaker in one side and a pepper shaker in the other, but instead has... two salt shakers. D'oh! And you can forget about spicy food; ethnic restaurants that would reliably clear my sinuses at home are flavorful here, but somehow... bland. How a culture that considers fried octopus tentacles a delicacy and prides itself on eating all parts of a pig (we're talking ears, intestine, and stomach) is so wimpy on this point defies explanation.

But back to the point. Olive oil is an essential part of traditional Spanish cooking. A quick trip to the local supermarket bears this out; you can literally buy the stuff by the gallon. In my first apartment, I was perplexed and disgusted to find what I took to be some kind of pooper-scooper in the kitchen drawer (see above). I promptly dispatched it to the terrace to serve as a makeshift trowel and forgot about it until a year later when, while watching a friend fry potatoes, I realized it was actually a frying implement. Go figure. My current apartment has no less than six frying pans-- and of course, the requisite pooper-scooper frying tool.

Houses here are also designed with frying in mind. Most kitchens have a large square of ceramic tile on the wall behind the stove, the better to remove oil splatters. It's also normal for every area in your apartment to have a door, including the kitchen, living room, and hallway. This is probably partly to help direct the heat in the summer, but it also helps shut off parts of the house from the penetrating odor of frying. The oven, on the other hand, is a strictly optional appliance; many apartments don't have one at all, and mine heats up to a dubious temperature which is barely conducive to baking. When it's not in use, which is most of the time, I use it (what else?) to store the frying pan collection.

I like fried food as much as anybody, and some Spanish dishes are pretty delicious: fried potatoes, fried green peppers with sea salt, and fried cheese nuggets, for example. (They also all go wonderfully with beer and red wine, which are plentiful here too.) And it's certainly easy to understand why olive oil is such a staple; the soil and climate, especially in the south of Spain, are very conducive to olive trees and not conducive to a whole lot else. But would you go so far as to classify it as vegetable? Take a look at the Spanish food pyramid above. There, next to the fruits and vegetables in the second row is... a jar of olive oil! Yes! And the instruction stipulates that the correct daily intake is three to six servings! Granted, a serving is one tablespoon, and I know olive oil is considered by far the healthiest of the oils. But for my money, oil is oil, and therefore belongs at the top of the food pyramid, not next to the spinach and carrots. It's also worth noting that beer and wine are included in the ok-to-eat-daily section of the pyramid ("consume with moderation"). Yes, Spain is different... but at least it's tasty, and hopefully my arteries aren't suffering too much. I suppose time will tell!